Sustainable packages using renewable, recyclable, and/or compostable materials are increasingly and strongly desired for food service and food packaging. Paper or paperboard itself is one of the most sustainable materials for packaging applications; however, paper or paperboard is often coated or laminated with barrier materials to fulfill the requirements of packaging. These additional barrier coatings or films often make the finished packages no longer repulpable or compostable. For example, widely used polyethylene coated paperboard is neither compostable nor recyclable under typical conditions. Polylactide coated paperboard can be compostable under industrial conditions, but it is not recyclable.
Oil and grease resistance is one of the top needs for paperboard packages in food and food service industries. Several technologies including specialty chemical (wax, fluorochemicals, starch, polyvinyl alcohol (PVOH), sodium alginate, etc.) treatment, polymer extrusion coating (polyethylene, etc.) have been employed to provide oil and grease resistance of paperboard packaging. However, the paper or paperboard treated with wax or coated with polyethylene, which is currently used in oil and grease resistant packaging, has difficulties in repulping and is not as easily recyclable as conventional paper or paperboard. Paper or paperboard treated with specialty chemicals such as fluorochemicals has potential health, safety and environmental concerns, and scientists have called for a stop to non-essential use of fluorochemicals in common consumer products including packaging materials.
There is a need for oil and grease resistant paperboard that is recyclable, compostable, low cost, and without environmental or safety concerns. Aqueous coating is one of the promising solutions to achieve these goals. However, blocking (the tendency of layers in a roll of paperboard to stick to one another) is a challenging technical hurdle in production and converting processes for aqueous barrier coated paperboard, and blocking is also a major technical hurdle for on-machine application of aqueous barrier coatings. Furthermore, most aqueous barrier coatings are not fully repulpable. Commonly-assigned U.S. application Ser. No. 15/017,735 which is incorporated herein by reference, addresses these problems. However, it is further desired to have a paperboard that is compostable. The ASTM D6868-11 Standard Specification for compostability of paper or paperboard requires any non-biodegradable organic constituent to be <1% of the dry weight of the finished product, and the total portion of organic constituents that are not biodegradable cannot exceed 5% of the total weight. Most conventional or commercially available aqueous barrier coatings use high to pure synthetic polymer binder level, which makes it extremely challenging to meet this <1% non-biodegradable composition requirement for the ASTM compostability standard, while achieving the barrier performance required by the package.